EP008: From Theater Kid to Tech Research Queen with Tricia Howard

Joel: I always remind people, I’m like, technology is not without emotion and feelings. It is so much of the industry is on vibes that it’s, that’s like vibes undergirded by white papers.

Tricia: Oh, wow. That’s freaking hilarious. I love that. Yeah, it truly is. And it makes sense. Humans are making the technology as it stands right now. Humans are making the technology and computers are just really fast versions of our brains without the emotion, but we have the emotion.

We should learn to live with that and as a marketer especially lean into that because if you can get emotional, I mean there’s a line, I know, but if you can get emotional about what you’re doing then it’s gonna be better because you’re gonna care more.

Joel: My name is Joel and I’m a recovering nerd. I’ve spent the last 25 years bouncing between creative jobs and technical teams. I worked at places like Nickelodeon to NASA and a few other places that started with different letters.

I was one of the first couple hundred people podcasting back in the early aughts until I accidentally became an IT analyst. Thankfully, someone in the government said, “Hey, you’re a nerd that talks good.” And that spun me off into the world of startups, branding, and marketing, for the same sort of researchers and startup founders that I used to hang out with. 

Today, I help technical people learn how to get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

On Nerds That Talk Good, I want to help you do the same. I talk with some of the greatest technical communicators, facilitators, and thinkers that I know who are behind the big brands and the tech talk that just works. 

 I could not be happier to be joined by Tricia Howard today, one of my absolute favorite people. 

Tricia is probably one of the most unique people you were, you will ever meet in either the technical or creative fields, and we’re gonna get into that.

Her formal title on LinkedIn is the Scribe of Cybersecurity Magicks for Akamai Technologies, a cloud computing security and content platform, which means she gets to work with those awesome security researchers. She calls herself Queen of the House of Cyberly. I was gonna say, you are like the Eliza Doolittle, but really you’re the Henry Higgins and for my theater folks out there, you’ll appreciate that reference.

Tricia: Oh, yes. I’ve also heard Trisha Paytas, so I’ll take this one much more.

Joel: Awesome. I love that. We’ll get into, we’ll get into some of the theater and stuff. We just we just always have a good time when we get together. So I figured it was time we finally got one on the recording. I wanna start off, because you’re so hard to pin down and to contextualize for people can you just open up with your nerd origin story, how you got to large muscle movements to where you are, and then the role that you serve today?

As you see it.

Tricia: Yeah, sure. Thank you for having me. I, you’re also one of my favorite people and I’m excited to be on here. Thanks for letting me come and chat. Yeah, I guess I am hard to pin down. I’ve never considered it that way. So I have a degree in theater and my initial plan was to get my Master’s of Fine Arts in Lighting Design and that did not happen and I moved up halfway across the country to learn how to sell technology and it was at an integrator. So I got a really well rounded experience from unified communications all the way to networking, etc and, As part of that journey, I found cybersecurity and I really fell in love with it.

It sounds really kitschy, but it’s actually true. I think that cybersecurity people, the defenders, are the closest thing we’re going to get to real life superheroes in the real space. And so it’s really cool. I think it’s an awesome space and it is, I’ve learned so much. I moved out of the sales world into marketing.

And I’ve specialized now in cybersecurity research. So my role here is a blog manager slash whatever needs to be done with security research. And I effectively, I do similar things to you, Joel. I help the nerds talk good. I tell people why somebody should care about the cool thing that my researchers broke.

That’s effectively it.

Joel: And it’s different than just your typical marketing that a lot of people think about, which is your higher level brand, message, storytelling, things like that. You do really get down into the tech and you are working side by side with the people who are breaking stuff and for, one of the larger behemoths in our industry who are doing a lot of really cool stuff behind the scenes because nerds don’t always like to talk about ourselves and what we do.

That’s the Henry Higgins for those of you who don’t know, just go and watch My Fair Lady. He was the the professor who thought he could it is a tragic story, because he thought he could really make her better than she was, and she was there all along, which is the story of what you and I do with people that we work with, because they’re all amazing, they’ve all got amazing stories, stuff to share, but sometimes the tech gets in the way a little bit.

Tricia: Yeah, actually I have a funny little story that is tangential that really I think explains why learning how to talk good is important and why diversity of thought is important. So the other day my partner and I were trying to figure out how to get his computer to show up on the TV and it was something that should have been very easy, but it was, there was some kind of weird error that we were getting.

So he’s an engineer and he started just very deep into the weeds. Give me the give me the model number. Give me this, give me that. So I do, we still can’t find anything. I was like, all right, I’m just going to pop onto Google. And I popped in ” this not working, why?” And it was so easy. It was right there.

And it was 35 minutes of troubleshooting was done in one single query because the query needed to be right. And this is what I love that you mentioned that they don’t always want to talk because I have found that the best researchers are some of the most humble people in the world, and I love not being humble on their behalf.

I love it. It’s so great. It’s so easy to do. They have the, I have the coolest job in the world. I get to deal with some of the smartest people ever, and they break stuff, and then I get to tell people and get people excited about it. What? That’s cool. I get paid for this.

Joel: I tell people I’m no longer I no longer practice. I, I’m like that old doctor that retired, but a cheerleader for the technologists and, even outside of cyber, just where technology is going. And I think sometimes we are leaving people behind who could really benefit from it or who could learn and lean into it. And so that’s why I think, your position in that in between is so crucial. 

When did you start to bring the Trisha that we all know and love. ‘Cause I’m sure there was a point where you got into sales and you’re like, all right, we’re going to do the straight marketing thing.

And I did the same thing. It’s I’m going to become a copy. I’ll get put in my little hat. I have my little fedora on and drink my might be whiskey in my coffee cup. I’m gonna be an ad man. What was it that gave you the freedom or the inspiration to start to do the stuff that you do?

Did you do that kind of on your own or did your employers give you enough leash to run and do that? 

Tricia: Sure. So I certainly, it was not given to me. I’ve lived my corporate life as a ask for forgiveness, not permission when it comes to content. So I used my social media I built my audience on social media and effectively what I did was I had an idea and if people didn’t care about it or I didn’t have the place at the time to be listened to in that way, then I would just do it myself and it would perform well and after a while I had an audience and then it became, okay, maybe we should actually ask her what she’s doing because it’s working.

So it was honestly out of spite. When I was in sales, I was an inside sales. So I was a cold caller, 75 plus cold calls a day. And that doesn’t include anything else. That is only that was the bare minimum. And I got tired of that because. People were just mad. They were unhappy.

They were, they don’t, who wants to be called randomly talking about technology that you don’t know or care about? Very few people unless you happen to say the exactly perfect words. And so I figured that working smarter not harder was the way to go. And if I was understanding things this particular way, maybe other people were.

And where the spike comes in is that we had these like Tuesday training things that every Tuesday, a new vendor would come in because we’re a VAR. So we have to understand everybody’s world. 

Almost consistently, like almost every week, somebody would say, “Oh, don’t worry sales, get the phone call set. And then we’ll get the smart guys in the room.” First off, “people” in the room. Second off no, excuse you.” Just because I have sales in my title doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. It just means that I have a different skill set than you. And so I got irritated and I started writing my own content and turns out people actually respond to things that they can understand.

Joel: I did a little obviously some snooping. ’cause, preparing and I know I’ve known you for a while, but I came back up on some of your older YouTube videos,, dramatically reading the cold sales emails.

Tricia Video Clip: In the corporate world, cold sales emails are considered especially heinous. One bored content creator in New York City has dedicated her time to creating these ridiculous videos. This is today’s episode.

Hello. I visited your site. It suited me a lot. I am interested to publish my written article on your site. I am interested in buying guest posts on your websites. Can you publish my article on your website? Can you please add my guest post with two anchor links on your site? If yes, then what will you charge for me?

Either will it be free, or will it be paid? Please tell me your best post price. Please, also, give me the link placement or the link insert price. Can you please tell me casino link accepted price? Can you please tell me casino, CBD oil, dating, and adult link accepted price?

I will pay you via PayPal, and I will pay you after publishing my piece. Let me know for further proceedings. 

Joel: I think we as an industry and technologists need to be able to laugh at ourselves. We need to be able to acknowledge the pain and that’s a way of breaking down those barriers and building that relationship with the audience. I’d be curious about in, in that stage What were you learning about breaking through barriers and disarming people?

 There was a phenomenal session at the Cyber Marketing Con that we both attended in Philly.

 Jon Selig who’s a comedy writer for sales organizations. He did a session called “Be the Hack,” how, like it doesn’t have to be funny, but it has to be disarming and you can use one line in a in an open, cold open. to break people down.

Back then, were you finding that opportunity? Any techniques that you would, that, that you’ve maybe brought into today.

Tricia: Sure. You mean like in cold calling?

Joel: in cold calling or just in building a rapport and relationship.

Tricia: Oh, sure. So this is probably a cop out answer, but I was curious, and I was genuinely curious. So what I would do is when I found a person or people that were kind enough to let me talk at them, then I would get to my script and I really genuinely didn’t know anything beyond that.

I could barely use my phone when I got into this industry. So when. When I would get somebody who was kind talking to me on a cold call, I would just say, Okay, listen, you know I’m a cold caller, you know I’m in sales you can probably tell by my voice that I’m pretty young. I, this is my first job in this, and I would love to ask you some other questions about your day to day if you have time.

And I was shocked at how, almost every single one of them said yes. And the people who didn’t usually said, call me back at this time. It just doesn’t work right now. And I would end up with 45 minute cold calls. It was a joke in the office that like, if yeah, and it was, one guy gave me his Steam username one time and it was, but genuinely, I think what it came down to was I really did want to know, and I wanted to learn and people respond to that.

Of course, humor is a great way to do that. I did have an opening line that I would I would say, “Oh, don’t worry about offending me. I got into sales because I started in theater and we just have rejection as part of our identity.”

Joel: Ooh, I like that.

Tricia: Yeah yeah, just silly little things like that.

I think I do take, I try and look at my stuff based on, I try and put myself in the audience’s shoes whatever audience that may be. If it’s for my personal audience or Akamai’s audience, I try and put myself in their shoes and see what they would want and I try and do that. Whether it’s be funny, hopefully it’s funny, I tend to go to cute comedy as well but sometimes it can be really dark if it needs to be.

Security’s not always fun and games. 

Joel: I think finding that, that bit of empathy for the audience, but also, it sounds like you put yourself out there, that’s the word I’m looking for, there, there was a vulnerability. Which is hey, look, let’s drop the pretense. 

Tricia: We all put our pants on the same way. We’re all human beings. I just

Joel: it’s I feel so awkward now when I’m sending messages to people, because I genuinely do feel like I’m a friendly person and I genuinely do hope your day is going great and you’re having a great 2025.

And I just feel now that there’s a veil of that friendliness. Gen X copywriter here, I use the emdash and I’m not ChatGPT and I get, I feel like we’re getting called out for some of the pleasantries and being human. 

It’s the way that, you know, we as an industry commoditize things, co op things, and then the stuff that really does work, being genuine, being, human, really reaching out. People look at you and they’re like, something’s wrong with you because you’re not following the script, which I think is maybe a little bit more of a problem in our industry.

Technology, SaaS, there’s a way to do things. And when someone like us shows up on the scene and we’re, a little bit different, a little bit out there, you get that side glance, but you’ve been doing it so long you’ve gotten the buy in and “we don’t know what Trish is cooking up over there, but it seems to be working.”

I did, have you suckered them in at this point?

Tricia: Oh, I, yeah, I would say definitely suckered in. For sure. The USPS video did that as far as Akamai’s concerned. 

Tricia as Hacker: Hey. 

Tricia as employee with Akamai: Hi. 

Tricia as Hacker: The USPS package that you ordered has been delivered to our warehouse. We can’t deliver it due to an incomplete address. So if you could just click the link and correct that address, we’ll get it fixed right up for you. 

Tricia as employee with Akamai: You’re coming across a little USP sus. I didn’t order a package.

Tricia as Hacker: What are you talking about?

Yes, you did. Just go to the website and correct the address. 

Tricia as employee with Akamai: No, I’m not falling for this. In fact, you’ve shown up roughly 169,379 times trying to do the same thing. 

Tricia as Hacker: You’re making this so weird. Just click the link. 

Tricia as employee with Akamai: I’ve been working with my research team over the last five months, and I’ve seen you and your friends around.

Tricia as Hacker: Where did this data come from? 

Tricia as employee with Akamai: It came from us. In fact, you and your buddy, USPSPOST.ME, are responsible for 29 percent of all related malicious traffic. And the fact that you do this around the holidays, the highest delivery time of the year? Not cool. 

Tricia as Hacker: I’m just gonna go.

Tricia as employee with Akamai: Hey! I’m not done. Even though you lured as many people to your malicious sites as USPS.COM, we spot phishing campaigns like you all the time and we’re all over it. You’re done. You’re done. 

Tricia: it does take a level of chutzpah or gumption or whatever word you want to use to put yourself out there on social media. And I, it’s funny because I took that for granted as a performer. That’s just what you do. You go out on the street and you busk you perform regardless of who’s watching.

My dog has seen the best performances that anybody will ever see. And that’s just what you do, and social media provides people like us an ability to do that. But yeah, I think, especially with the jump, if you will, in LLMs and other generative AI, I think that our Lack of polish is what is going to help us a lot because that is going to be super obvious that it’s human.

Anything that is too perfect or too kind or too sweet, almost saccharine-y, is going to be called out. And the cybersecurity industry is loud. They love to call things out. Yeah, it, I am curious to see how that changes. Like, how just genuine human connection gets altered based on how AI is involved now.

Joel: Yeah. But as an industry, I had a CISO I worked for who said, the, a mature organization or a mature industry is like, people playing position soccer. Everybody knows what they’re doing and everybody’s playing.

But I sometimes feel like our industry is playing what he would call bunch ball soccer. You get those six and eight year olds, ball goes this way and everybody goes this way. And I, yeah, I love Bob West. He was the first CISO at the Department of Homeland Security.

Great guy. But I always remember that. Bunch of ball soccer. And I feel like as an industry, we do that. And it takes somebody standing up to do something different to push against. And then it’s only a matter of time before everybody else sees like, Hey, maybe that’s a new thing, and then everybody bunched ball soccer’s over to there.

So how do you now in, in your capacity, working on behalf of Akamai, working on behalf of all these researchers who they do want to look professional. They can’t be unpolished from the corporate perspective, but they want to stand out and be different.

How do you bring that to them? Do, are you helping them discover their own different or are you bringing the difference as a mediator?

Tricia: In a best case scenario, I’m bringing them to finding their own voice. I want to be more of a coach. I don’t want to be the doer in that regard because they, it is their personal brand. And something about researchers, That I think we in marketing tend to forget is that their brand is the of utmost importance and not only to them, but to your organization as well. Because if they get noted as a charlatan or anything else, InfoSec does not forget and then you’re now at a brand loss based on something that you thought was going to be a good idea.

So I, when I keep, when I say polish, more in the brand polish way. The researchers like memes, they like jokes they are, they’re silly, they like cats. Use that. It doesn’t have to go to brand guidelines. That’s, that is something that I That’s a fine line to toe, because you want to make sure that you’re not going against something, like we don’t want to say something that could make us look bad, but at the same time, if it’s genuine, we need to err on the side of genuity when we’re talking about security research, because it is already so separate from the rest of security.

They live in such a niche land of forward thinking that the other, the rest of the industry isn’t going to get to until, as you said, bunch ball soccer 10 years from now. 

Yeah, I try and encourage them and help where I need it. I definitely put in my, my little sass here and there. You learn the researchers and what they’re willing to do and you.

Change, your personality based on that.

Joel: Yeah so you’re almost managing, you’re almost in house agency managing their personal brands on behalf of capital A Akamai Brand. And there’s a lot of reconciliation to do there. It’s got to be, Got to be a little bit of a challenging making sure that everything, ultimately reflects well upon the brand, toes, the message, what are we talking about? What are we focusing about? 

Maybe talk a little bit about the your process or the team because obviously you’re working with Communications, you’re working with the marketing team proper, big air quotes. I just saw a video, what is it called? Blinky quotes, somebody called those.

Winky quotes. I like that, yeah. I’m using winky quotes at you. But like the proper brand, and then your, how do you coordinate that messaging across a large organization like that?

Tricia: Yeah, that is probably the biggest challenge that I have is communicating internally effectively that also makes the researchers happy. So one of the, this is one of those weird lines to toe. Number one you need efficiency. Efficiency is key when you’re talking about cybersecurity research because often it is fast and you are, hopefully not getting scooped, because a lot of the stuff that we do, we’re finding botnets, we’re researching what’s out in the wild, so if we can find it, theoretically, somebody else can. And you need to be able to make sure that is we have a lot of resources that other people do not have, let me be very clear.

But there it stands that there, that is a real fear. We, you need to be able to work very quickly. I identified a few people that one in each or section of the organization, legal, PR the blog team to the web team, et cetera, and they’re all in my little core group. And when I have a new piece, whether it’s a rush or a regular one, they all, they’re all aware of it as soon as I am.

And. That way they can get into it a little bit earlier, especially legal. If there are certain, if there are certain things that that we may need to have a little bit of extra discussion about, we get them in there a lot earlier and just do it a few times. It’s going to be rocky and figure out what, what works.

But efficiency is number one efficiency and over, 

Joel: Yeah, I think efficiency and consistency and if you’re able to build that internal brand, that internal linkage, they know what you’re gonna bring to them. You’ve done it enough times that they’re gonna trust that it’s written. It probably needs a light polish or something like that.

Or copy editor 

good to go. Awesome. Gotta love a good copy editor.

Tricia: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Ooh 

Joel: for final copy edits. Actually, later on, I have a call with my publishing team. I’m so excited to get the book out. And it’s been, yeah, I’ve learned a heck of a lot working with a team.

Even self publishing this. So I can imagine, yeah being where you are and working in that team. I’ve usually had the luxury of being at agencies and having a production line thing and nothing as burning as oh shit, here’s zero day and we want to be out first on it. That’s, I got to tell you, that takes a lot.

Tricia: It, yeah, I make this joke a lot that I’m a marketing incident responder. Because that’s effectively what it is. Whenever something happens, we have to jump on and that’s how it goes. We have so many researchers, too, that span different aspects of security, which is really cool.

So sometimes it will take us a little longer to get something out than maybe a different organization would, because we want to bring in multiple teams. So that’s a whole other decision making process and managing emotions. A lot of my job is just managing feelings, truly.

This part of the org has feelings about this. This part of the org has feelings about this. This one has feelings about everything and then trying to coordinate that in, not only internally, but then take all of those decisions and make the rest of the world care about it. And that’s the fun part.

Joel: Yeah, I, I always remind people, I’m like, technology is not without emotion and feelings. It is so much of the industry is on vibes that it’s, that’s like vibes undergirded by white papers.

Tricia: yeah, on it. Oh, wow. That’s freaking hilarious. I love that. Yeah, it truly is. And it makes sense. Humans are making the technology as it stands right now. Humans are making the technology and computers are just really fast versions of our brains. So if we, without the emotion, but we have the emotion.

We should learn to live with that and as a marketer especially lean into that because if you can get emotional, I mean there’s a line, I know, but if you can get emotional about what you’re doing then it’s gonna be better because you’re gonna care more.

Joel: Yeah. So let’s dip in a little bit, maybe some of the tactics when you’re working with with a researcher, they’re bringing you a problem, something that they’ve uncovered. What are some of the tactics and the ways that you dig to the deeper why? And, like, “why do you care about this?”

“Because it, 20 million flippity flops in this.”

Or “they’re using this backdoor. We’ve never seen that before.” but then it’s why do you care about it? What are the things that you’ve built that relationship now that they know these questions are coming, but you still catch them off guard? What are some of the Tricia secrets?

Tricia: Oh that’s really cute. So number one, I lean on the team a lot. So I lean on, my core team that I was just referring to, I have the things that I care about, but they also have their things, and there are going to be typical one, two, three, four things that legal, PR, et cetera, cares about every single time.

So the first tactic was just letting the researchers know that, “hey, every single time you bring a piece to me, I need to know where your images came from. I need to know, I need you to put them natively in a file. I need you to have your figure captions put in this particular way.” And depending on how involved they are in the writing process.

They, some of my teams, like this is all they do. They research for publication. Some teams, this is their side gig. So I have, you have to manage that. I would say that’s a good tactic is understanding what the researcher’s actual job is first. If it’s not a if it’s not only research. Make sure that you are fitting in with their work stream not trying to make it harder because that’ll just make them stop.

Other than that, it comes with respect. This takes a lot of time. So I think a lot of and I’m, I am so time blind in my real life. It is not even funny. But we really get time blind when we’re talking about corporate stuff. You have to remember, again, these researchers, their name And is everything to them.

And there are a lot of not super great marketers out there that they’ve been burned. And so sometimes you have to actually make up for past mistakes first and then get there. It comes with trust. So tactics are showing them that you actually know what you’re talking about. Show them, I showed them my side of the house.

Hey, do you want to see how many views your blog’s got? Here, I’ll show you. They’d never even gotten that information before. Suddenly, there’s a little bit more excitement to write the next one because, how many press hits we’ll have. So I do try and show the other side of it and explain why it’s important and show it if I can.

That helps. They understand numbers. Researchers understand numbers better than we do.

Joel: A hundred views. Is that good? Yeah, that’s great. That’s really good. Yeah. So great. You only got 60 last time. That’s that the number’s going up and I guess, yeah, no it’s. It’s true. I think appealing, it’s not ego, but it’s appealing to that, it’s a different emotion. It’s the, you want that product to be as good as it can be.

They want that, they want what they’ve done to be represented as well as it can be, but to see other people jibing with it and going, Oh, I like that. Or get feeding them that those comments. I think a lot of times. In tech and marketing, it’s the, ” you just figure out the words and make us look good.

We’ll stand over here. We’ll worry about that.”

And I do think it’s that partnership is lacking in a lot of organizations. And when you have a good, strong organization that everybody understands what’s at stake and everybody is sharing their wins, that’s huge.

Tricia: Absolutely. And my role is very unique because of the size of our organization. Also, not every org is going to need somebody like me to just being honest. But if you are in a position where you are consistently marketing security research, it is important, I think, to have some sort of liaison in between them that can speak to both sides.

You don’t have to be fluent in both languages, but you need to be able to say the top hundred words. And the, I think it’s certainly not an overrated skill.

 Tactics wise also, I think getting to know the researchers as people which sounds silly, but really taking the extra time to get to know them.

It means a lot. And this is good, just regardless of where you’re at. It doesn’t have to be just researchers, but if you are having trouble communicating. Maybe take a step back and remember that we’re all human beings and try and meet them on a human level. And then if the work level isn’t working, try the personal one.

And if they both aren’t, then maybe that researcher just isn’t going to be a good fit for what you’re looking for an external spokesperson. Cause they aren’t always going to be. Some are going to be better at writing. Some are going to be better on camera. You just seem to get to know them.

Joel: Yeah. What are, I’m curious about some of the tools and resources and things that you’re seeing whether we touched on AI a little bit earlier, but even outside of that, what are some of the things that you’re really jazzed about getting to bring to this this conversation?

Tricia: Huh. That is an interesting question. I don’t know. Because I don’t terribly get excited about technology, to be honest. I get excited about breaking it. I, no, I am excited to, AI is probably the easiest one, but I am actually curious to see how LLMs develop and how we use them more. I’m a big fan of looking forward rather than looking back and being realistic.

We cannot sit here and tell people to keep their kids off of LLMs. It’s not going to happen. Just like we could not be kept off of insert whatever rebellious teen thing you want to here.

We need to do that at work as well. LLMs are here. We need to deal with them, especially those of us who are creatives and writing who are understandably feeling a little bit of way about it, but we need to learn how to use them rather than view them as a threat. Because if we view them as a threat, then we are hurting ourselves in the process.

I wrote a blog a long time ago after watching the movie Hidden Figures, which is such a great film. And I The title of it was What Hidden Figures Taught Me About AI. And this was years ago. And the whole point was technology is going to change. Technology is going to evolve. We have to do that also to get ahead.

Instead of, if you want to be left behind, start complaining about how things used to be. But if you want to move forward, learn a new skill. Learn it. Own it.

Joel: Yeah, I dabble, I’ve used it here and there, and I find a lot of these tools to be very interesting in context, but not meaning. It’s, the human, I talk with, George Kamide. of Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, and he and I were having a conversation and he was saying that the human mind is a meaning making machine.

Tricia: Oh, yep.

Joel: Computers can do context, but they really, they can’t get to the meaning yet. And I think that’s where we still need to have the people in the loop and the humans in the loop advising and helping, throwing the snark in, throwing the meme in a little bit here and there I just don’t see those tools getting I don’t see the tools getting there yet.

It’s uncanny, but not quite there. 

Tricia: We’ve had deepfakes for years. This isn’t new. I guess that’s where I come from. Again, from the research angle, it’s this isn’t really new. It’s just newly widespread.

Joel: Yeah, it’s accessible to more people, and we don’t know what to do with it, some people.

Tricia: Yeah, 

Joel: it’s media literacy, and it’s keeping that healthy skepticism, which thankfully we have a whole heck of a lot of in our industry, but not in a lot of other industries.

Tricia: sure. Yeah. 

Joel: So, with that in mind where do you see the fututre of just technical communications in general?

Is it more obviously white papers are never going to go away. I’m a big advocate for making white papers better and including, brand language and promissory value propositions and things like that. But, I think people are wanting quicker information. They’re wanting that personal touch.

Where do you see the future of that going with what you do and what we do as an industry just as a whole?

Tricia: I think interactive content is going to end up taking out a lot of static stuff. Especially when we’re talking about something like research it’s very powerful to be able to see it. And it’s very powerful to be able to be part of the journey yourself as a user. 

If I think about, one of our big research reports, if a user could go in and have their user journey already known and be able to guide them through a journey that is catered to them, and this is all done automagically, of course catered to them, then they’re going to immediately get to the points that they care about, and that, in turn, is going to make them want to seek out more.

I think interactive content is key. Is definitely where it’s at. Video is fantastic, of course. I think video is, we’re moving less into text and more into video, and I imagine that’s going to be even more so with the, with Generative AI. Even though they’ve gotten pretty good but I think we’ll be able to tell by still, even silly little speech things like or what, or huh, that an AI is probably not going to do unless it’s specifically told to do.

Joel: Oh boy, I tell you what, I I have used Google’s Notebook LM, is completely different from the other LMs. I uploaded a manuscript of my book to it and generated a two host pod, a 15 minute two host podcast, man and a woman, And it’s got all of the “um, yeah, real it’s like this, I’m probably gonna I’ll drop in a little clip of it here, but I’m probably going to publish it as an episode because it’s uncanny, but just enough to the point where you’re like that’s too good.

It can’t be real. 

Fake Podcaster 1: Okay ready to dive into this message specs book? You listeners sent in some really interesting excerpts, and we are here to unpack it all for you. It’s all about really nailing that technical communication, which, let’s face it, is more important now than ever, right? In a world that’s just drowning in information.

And get this, to help us crack the code. We’re going to be drawing on some pretty unexpected sources, like we’re talking ancient philosophy, we’re talking psychology, and wait for it, toy marketing strategies. 

Fake Podcaster 2: You know what I think is so fascinating is how it really gets at this experience I think we’ve all had, that dreaded blank stare moment.

You’re giving a presentation, maybe laying down some fascinating technical details, and boom, you look at it as your audience and you just see those eyes glazing over. Oh, 

Fake Podcaster 1: tell me about it. It’s like a punch to the gut, 

Fake Podcaster 2: it is. And the thing is, this book really digs into why that happens. 

Fake Podcaster 1: Ah. 

Fake Podcaster 2: And you know what?

It’s not because we’re boring. 

Fake Podcaster 1: It’s not. 

Fake Podcaster 2: It’s not. It argues, it’s more about this gap that exists between how we tend to communicate in the tech world and how people actually process information. 

Fake Podcaster 1: Because at the end of the day, we’re all suckers for a good story. 

Fake Podcaster 2: It’s true. But the book also emphasizes that not just any story will do. It has to be authentic. Like you really have to tap into those genuine narratives that are woven into the fabric of your brand’s values and mission. 

Fake Podcaster 1: Because people can spot a fake a mile away.

Tricia: It’s too perfect. 

Joel: is too perfect. Yeah. 

Tricia: It’s like in games trying to simulate water. There, games have come across like wild jumps with visually, but simulating water because it’s so random is one of the things that we still have not gotten done.

Joel: Yeah. It’s incredible. The level of things that just can’t be replicated. So to do all personal, interactive journeying and things like that, it does take resources and it takes tools and things like that. There’s a lot of companies that don’t have that. How do you think a small startup competes with that?

Or a soloist who’s just trying to share their passion or their technology or their research? What do you think we, what do you think we can do? 

Tricia: Yeah. I think lean to your strengths and be lean with your content. Find ways you can reuse, repurpose forever, theoretically, making evergreen content and then jump, splicing it. So you have one hour episode of a podcast and that can turn into what, 7, 10 different pieces of content if you really wanted to cut it down.

And some of them are going to be timely and some of them are going to be evergreen. And then you can mix it with other content. A big problem I think we have in content creation just across the board is. Caring about novelty rather than impact. 

And we, just because you do something new doesn’t mean it’s going to get more views than something that you did before.

It’s all about how you are packaging whatever you did before. So the same soundbite could be relevant for seven different topics throughout the year, and you cannot, assume that everybody has seen your stuff. You just truly can’t. You should actually assume the opposite. Oh really?

We’ve already posted this three times. 

Joel: We’re talking about this again?

Tricia: Yeah. No you absolutely, because you’re talking to their audience, and now you have, ugh, anyway, on and on, but yes, I think I think finding ways to use what you have multiple times and in multiple places is a great way to keep things lean, especially for a startup.

And also, as a startup, you usually have a lot less bureaucratic red tape. So take a lot of risks. Talk to the community in their voice, which happens to be snarky and sometimes laden with expletives. Talk to them in their voice, and I think that will help them stand out. Not only from AI, but also just from the bigger brands in general.

Joel: I think that is the key. It’s one of the things that I always talk about with a lot of my clients, which is, your brand guide is cute. Your little PDF of your slogan and your tagline is great, but you need to be keeping track of every atomic message and everything that you want to say.

I call it the Cheesecake Factory menu of everything we would want to say so that you can whip up really quickly that combo platter of, this is what we should talk about now. 

And that’s one of the things that I try to build with my clients. So that they have that. Cause being at content agencies and writing on behalf of other people, I didn’t ever have the benefit of that.

So do you have that little notebook of those drum beats? And you’re like, you’re seeing you’re, is that part of the the role that you serve as connecting those dots and saying, “Hey, what you guys are doing over there is neat, What you guys are doing over there is neat, but together it’s a series. Together they reinforce each other.”

Tricia: Oh, yeah, that’s, honestly, those are my favorite pieces because then I get to work with multiple teams who are like wildly smart. So we had a great example. This was a botnet. Our SIRT, our Security Intelligence and Response Team, had found a botnet out in the wild. And we took it to one of our other teams who deals with more of the ransomware side, and we asked them to do some analysis on their end as well.

And what we ended up with was this wildly awesome piece that included things like threat actor evolution, it included the actual specs of what the botnet was doing. But it was also carrying over from what the botnet was doing in a previous version, and we were able to bring in multiple different strands of it, and it was really cool.

The USPS research was also like that, where our data science team said, “hey, we wonder how many of these domains are actually malicious,” and then we took that to another team who were, who focused solely on phishing domains, and they were like, “oh, let me tell you, actually,” and…

Joel: Let me show you my stack of stuff!

Tricia: Exactly. We as humans tend to assume that everybody thinks like us and that they care about the same things that we do. And that is not always true. And it’s a good thing to to bring those groups together because then they can learn from each other. I like to connect the teams and we end up with a better product as a result because we’re getting more context.

Joel: I’ve recently started Trying a different method of bringing in information and synthesizing information using note cards instead of a notebook. Because with a notebook, things are chronological and you can’t bounce ideas against each other. But if you’ve got them all on note cards, and you know I’m really huge into my card decks.

Tricia: I have my post its. 

Yeah. 

Joel: Yeah it’s, you’re bringing together. I read in this book, innovation is the colliding of different ideas from different disciplines that just happen to align with each other. 

Tricia: Oh, I, like that. 

Joel: And I think that’s still something that, again, the bots are not going to be able to do for us.

They can, they can point out patterns. But I think that’s where we, as humans, where we bring in our divergent minds. Thinking, our theater background, our philosophy, um, that’s stuff that I think, I think we excel at. Um, and we can help the, the people who have forgotten how to be human, how to be human, 

Tricia: techies speak in ones and zeros and we speak in unicorns. 

Joel: Oh, I love it. So I think I would be remiss if I didn’t wrap up and start asking you about some of your personal passion projects and the things that you do to keep things fresh and exciting. Obviously, there’s a big bleed over of Tricia Howard into your personality and your social with all the theater and everything.

What are some of the other things that that you do? Keep things fresh.?

Tricia: For my personal content, I only really do it when I’m wildly inspired, which is inconsistent. I choose that trade off, but, um, so that kind of helps with keeping things fresh because it truly is just whatever I want to do.

The most recent one was the producers, and I’ve had this noodling around in my head for years, and it came on, and I was like, I was sitting in a in between meeting state, and I looked over, and I was like, I’ve had these lyrics for how many years? I need to just do it.

Tricia Singing (Two Parts in Duet): Alright, Depression. It’s been a while, but I think it’s time to make content again. Being creative helps, and it’s our chance, and we’re actually really good at this. You cannot be serious. Remember what’s real. You’ve got writer’s block. You have the facts. You’ve done so much. You’re not this real. You know you’re worthy.

You can’t sing. You just squawk your dumb as a hawk. Your brain is mine to stop and see. Get up, Trisha. You can’t create. You’re seeing grandeur. You’re gonna fail. Snap out of it. Don’t even try it. They don’t hate you. Listen now and let me help you through it. I’ll protect you from yourself. I don’t need your help.

You need to protect yourself.

Tricia: And so sometimes, keeping things fresh is truly just doing it, doing things that edited, that are not terrible. Silly things like I posted today, just jumping into the chair. Just doing things to keep my brain in the act of creating content. I think if Especially those of us who struggle with depression, anxiety etc, it’s very easy to get stuck in our own head and think that our content is bad and and that people don’t like it, and what the reality is that we haven’t posted anything, so we’re not getting any feedback.

How can we know? And So yeah, I do that a lot. I also really love jigsaw puzzles. I spend a lot of time with my dog and my partner and I do things that I really enjoy in my life and I try and I’ve really worked hard to keep the work life balance because I struggled with that in my 20s a lot and Yeah.

So yeah, I think trying to keep my brain in a good healthy state helps everything else. Because if this is messed up, then if your input is bad, guess what your output’s gonna be?

Joel: Yeah. No,

I think keeping inspired, keeping healthy it’s hard for some of us where, you know, we do get jazzed about the tech and the, job does start to take over a little bit. And, it’s and I think recognizing recognizing the boundaries. Keeping yourself healthy and grounded is like super important.

I’ve had some lyrics kicking around for quite a while since we bumped into each other at Black Hat. I think we need, I think we need to do that Modern Major General gig. 

Tricia: have been doing this. Oh, yes.

Joel: yeah, I’ve got, I have the first stanza but yeah, maybe I’ll do it right now. I’ll just do it right now.

 I am the very model of an entry level candidate.

I’ve seven years of red team lead with 97 scans to date.

I know the ports of every cloud and even Compuserve of late.

I am the very model of an entry level candidate.

That’s all I have so far, 

but I’m 

Tricia: Oh my gosh, that’s incredible.

Joel: That’s gonna become, that’s gonna become the promo for this episode. It’s not about you. It’s about me. 

Tricia: it, of course, that is true. It’s so funny because my model major general was also about recruiting. So that’s hilarious that’s where it went such a good one. 

Joel: It’s always so fun to get together with you and jam. And I love, now that we can do this through screens and stuff, but for the people who aren’t following you, for the people who wanna connect up, follow what you’re doing, where can people find you? 

Tricia: LinkedIn is going to be the easiest place. So that’s linkedin.com/in/triciakickssaas/. That’s S A S security as a service or SaaS as a service. So that’s probably the easiest place. If you’re looking for the research work that we do, that’s going to be at Akamai.com/security-research.

And that has any and everything that comes out of our security intelligence group, which is the team that I work on.

Joel: Awesome. Any other tips, tools, references that you want to make? Again, the audience here is, or is like those people that you help every day. So what would maybe be one one piece of advice or tool to that technical person who’s, maybe they’re just feeling a little bit bottled up and they want to get out and, make something of what they’re doing technically, bring it into the world. Beautiful words of advice from Tricia Howard. 

Tricia: Oh man, 

Woof. I would say Write it down. Write it down. Record it. Do something. Free write. Just get it out of your head because if it sticks in your head, it’s going to stay there. Get it out. And then if you don’t like how it looks or how it sounds or whatever, just go ask. People are very willing to, people like you and I, Joel, are very willing to look at stuff and give pointers.

But we can’t do that if you don’t create the content. And I’m a big believer in that even if a topic has been covered a hundred different times, if you haven’t talked about it, it has not been covered yet. So go forward. Your biases, your experiences, all of this feed into how we view the world and as such, how we communicate to the world.

So write it down. Go talk to somebody about it. Ask for help. We do exist.

Joel: Oh, I love it. Yeah, slide into our DMs.

I can’t think of a better way to leave it. And this has been such a joy and a pleasure. Tricia, you know, I love you and appreciate you so much. You are one of my favorite people. So thanks for joining me on this. 

Tricia: Of course. Thanks for having me.

Joel: And have a beautiful 2025.

Tricia: And to you. Bye.

Joel: If you want links to the resources mentioned on the show, head on over to the episode page. And for information on booking a message therapy workshop, getting your hands on the MessageDeck, to check out my upcoming book, or just buy me a coffee, go to nerdthattalksgood.com/podcast. 

 Until next time, happy messaging.

 Remember, you don’t have to speak well, you only gotta learn how to talk good.